The game was up. The race was at an end; the rope was woven for his neck. If, by a miracle, he could escape from this strait, he had but to turn his face another way, no matter where, and there would rise some new avenger front to front with him; some infant in an hour grown old, or old man in an hour grown young, or blind man with his sight restored, or deaf man with his hearing given him. There was no chance. He sank down in a heap against the wall, and never hoped again from that moment.
“I am not his friend, although I have the honour to be his relative,” said Mr Chuzzlewit. “You may speak to me. Where have you watched, and what have you seen?”
“I have watched in many places,” returned Nadgett, “night and day. I have watched him lately, almost without rest or relief;” his anxious face and bloodshot eyes confirmed it. “I little thought to what my watching was to lead. As little as he did when he slipped out in the night, dressed in those clothes which he afterwards sunk in a bundle at London Bridge!”
Jonas moved upon the ground like a man in bodily torture. He uttered a suppressed groan, as if he had been wounded by some cruel weapon; and plucked at the iron band upon his wrists, as though (his hands being free) he would have torn himself.
“Steady, kinsman!” said the chief officer of the party. “Don't be violent.”
“Whom do you call kinsman?” asked old Martin sternly.
“You,” said the man, “among others.”
Martin turned his scrutinizing gaze upon him. He was sitting lazily across a chair with his arms resting on the back; eating nuts, and throwing the shells out of window as he cracked them, which he still continued to do while speaking.
“Aye,” he said, with a sulky nod. “You may deny your nephews till you die; but Chevy Slyme is Chevy Slyme still, all the world over. Perhaps even you may feel it some disgrace to your own blood to be employed in this way. I'm to be bought off.”
“At every turn!” cried Martin. “Self, self, self. Every one among them for himself!”
“You had better save one or two among them the trouble then and be for them as well as YOURself,” replied his nephew. “Look here at me! Can you see the man of your family who has more talent in his little finger than all the rest in their united brains, dressed as a police officer without being ashamed? I took up with this trade on purpose to shame you. I didn't think I should have to make a capture in the family, though.”
“If your debauchery, and that of your chosen friends, has really brought you to this level,” returned the old man, “keep it. You are living honestly, I hope, and that's something.”
“Don't be hard upon my chosen friends,” returned Slyme, “for they were sometimes your chosen friends too. Don't say you never employed my friend Tigg, for I know better. We quarrelled upon it.”
“I hired the fellow,” retorted Mr Chuzzlewit, “and I paid him.”
“It's well you paid him,” said his nephew, “for it would be too late to do so now. He has given his receipt in full; or had it forced from him rather.”
The old man looked at him as if he were curious to know what he meant, but scorned to prolong the conversation.
“I have always expected that he and I would be brought together again in the course of business,” said Slyme, taking a fresh handful of nuts from his pocket; “but I thought he would be wanted for some swindling job; it never entered my head that I should hold a warrant for the apprehension of his murderer.”
“HIS murderer!” cried Mr Chuzzlewit, looking from one to another.
“His or Mr Montague's,” said Nadgett. “They are the same, I am told. I accuse him yonder of the murder of Mr Montague, who was found last night, killed, in a wood. You will ask me why I accuse him as you have already asked me how I know so much. I'll tell you. It can't remain a secret long.”
The ruling passion of the man expressed itself even then, in the tone of regret in which he deplored the approaching publicity of what he knew.
“I told you I had watched him,” he proceeded. “I was instructed to do so by Mr Montague, in whose employment I have been for some time. We had our suspicions of him; and you know what they pointed at, for you have been discussing it since we have been waiting here, outside the room. If you care to hear, now it's all over, in what our suspicions began, I'll tell you plainly: in a quarrel (it first came to our ears through a hint of his own) between him and another office in which his father's life was insured, and which had so much doubt and distrust upon the subject, that he compounded with them, and took half the money; and was glad to do it. Bit by bit, I ferreted out more circumstances against him, and not a few. It required a little patience, but it's my calling. I found the nurse —here she is to confirm me; I found the doctor, I found the undertaker, I found the undertaker's man. I found out how the old gentleman there, Mr Chuffey, had behaved at the funeral; and I found out what this man,” touching Lewsome on the arm, “had talked about in his fever. I found out how he conducted himself before his father's death, and how since and how at the time; and writing it all down, and putting it carefully together, made case enough for Mr Montague to tax him with the crime, which (as he himself believed until to-night) he had committed. I was by when this was done. You see him now. He is only worse than he was then.”
Oh, miserable, miserable fool! oh, insupportable, excruciating torture! To find alive and active—a party to it all—the brain and right-hand of the secret he had thought to crush! In whom, though he had walled the murdered man up, by enchantment in a rock, the story would have lived and walked abroad! He tried to stop his ears with his fettered arms, that he might shut out the rest.
As he crouched upon the floor, they drew away from him as if a pestilence were in his breath. They fell off, one by one, from that part of the room, leaving him alone upon the ground. Even those who had him in their keeping shunned him, and (with the exception of Slyme, who was still occupied with his nuts) kept apart.
“From that garret-window opposite,” said Nadgett, pointing across the narrow street, “I have watched this house and him for days and nights. From that garret-window opposite I saw him return home, alone, from a journey on which he had set out with Mr Montague. That was my token that Mr Montague's end was gained; and I might rest easy on my watch, though I was not to leave it until he dismissed me. But, standing at the door opposite, after dark that same night, I saw a countryman steal out of this house, by a sidedoor in the court, who had never entered it. I knew his walk, and that it was himself, disguised. I followed him immediately. I lost him on the western road, still travelling westward.”
Jonas looked up at him for an instant, and muttered an oath.
“I could not comprehend what this meant,” said Nadgett; “but, having seen so much, I resolved to see it out, and through. And I did. Learning, on inquiry at his house from his wife, that he was supposed to be sleeping in the room from which I had seen him go out, and that he had given strict orders not to be disturbed, I knew that he was coming back; and for his coming back I watched. I kept my watch in the street—in doorways, and such places—all that night; at the same window, all next day; and when night came on again, in the street once more. For I knew he would come back, as he had gone out, when this part of the town was empty. He did. Early in the morning, the same countryman came creeping, creeping, creeping home.”
“Look sharp!” interposed Slyme, who had now finished his nuts. “This is quite irregular, Mr Nadgett.”
“I kept at the window all day,” said Nadgett, without heeding him. “I think I never closed my eyes. At night, I saw him come out with a bundle. I followed him again. He went down the steps at London Bridge, and sunk it in the river. I now began to entertain some serious fears, and made a communication to the Police, which caused that bundle to be—”